On Clarity As Freedom
Having freedom in the way I live my life and use my time has been important to me for over a decade. I didn’t always choose to serve this objective through the years because sometimes other priorities trumped it, but overall I established an important personal definition... flexibility is freedom.
Which is why a podcast episode resonated so soundly with me this week.
In it, Jimmy Lai, a Hong Kong media mogul and outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party, discusses being arrested under the new Beijing-sanctioned national security law in Hong Kong and how his life led him to this point.
The story he shares is of a man who’s pursued freedom, in various forms and evolving definitions, from the time he was a child.
Growing up in a China ravaged by famine, food is freedom when you’re starving.
After he built his riches in fashion and retail, he shifted to media after the Tiananmen Square Massacre because he realized information is freedom when you’re oppressed.
Ironically, he may now lose his own as a result of the ways he’s pursued his definition of freedom. But he wouldn’t do anything differently.
It was interesting to hear the interviewer hesitate to accept Jimmy’s choice to give up his freedom/life for his country and continue to suggest that it’s a tough choice to make.
Jimmy answers, “it depends on what you want in life.”
…
Our lives are not playing out on as large of a stage at as grand of a scale with as great of consequences as Jimmy Lai’s, but the parallels in how we make our decisions are exactly the same.
There are no objective good/bad, right/wrong, conventional/unconventional, easy/difficult decisions. It is only by our own definitions can we even begin to judge what matters and makes sense for ourselves.
And when we’re ready to move forward, the bravest decisions we make will often be met with resistance… not just our own out of fear, but from others out of their fears as well. But when I’m clear in what I’m doing and why, it makes it a lot easier to face that opposition.
In the years since I've added another important personal definitions… Clarity is freedom. It allows me to make and go forth with the scariest decisions because there’s no question about the right or wrongness of my choices. It’s simply THE choice.
I hope none of us have to face a choice in which jail could be the end result. But I do hope that all of us can have Jimmy’s conviction in the definition of what we want from this life we live.
Going into this weekend, it might be freeing to consider... What would free us from the plight we’re currently dealing with? And if we're still defining the plight we're dealing with, then that could be an equally freeing step to take as well.
🙏🙏,
Pam
